FAQ

DOES DISRUPT HAVE amazing capacity builders?

Pretty much! We do great work, with excellent people, and we make sure that our people are the best at what they do. We are all passionate about making a positive impact on the planet and helping others unlock their potential to do so too. All our capacity buidlers are trainined in our unique expiernce based pedagodgy.

Why Disrupt Design?

Design is a powerful social scripter that influences everything in our lives; our agency exists to disrupt the way design and creativity is used, understood, and harnessed for its inherent power as a social influencer. We created the Disruptive Design approach to help others intentionally enact positive change by synthesizing the important areas of systems, sustainability and design.

Who created the Disruptive Design Method?

Our founder Dr. Leyla Acaroglu started to research how one person can make a change though creative production during her PhD. She went onto develop the method and full methodology set in the years after completing her doctorate in pro-sustainability change making. She now trains people to teach the method and has trained thousands of people in its simple 3-step process of making activated creative change in the world.

What ABOUT innovation?

Innovation by nature is reductive and iterative - that's not bad, it just means it's not progressive enough for the types of changes we need to see in the world. Traditionally, innovation is about incrementally doing things differently. Like recycling, it helps to eliminate an end of pipe issue, but current lacks the motivation to design out waste from the start - which would be circular and disruptive by design. We help with the design of new systems that make the old ones unsustainable ones obsolete.

What’s the deal with your disruptions?

We create initiatives that tackle big global challenges in beautiful ways. We approach the selected problem arena through our Disruptive Design Method, figure out how all the complex system components fit together and then use our creative powers to design a systems intervention that has the power to influence positive social change by design. We are igniting change and conversations in others by making these tools for change accessible and actionable.

DO YOU DO Design Thinking?

Not really. We use design methods (as people have been doing FOREVER), and we adopt methods from other professional knowledge sets such as environmental, systems, and social sciences. For example we use the action research approach to iterative creation and we apply a lot of behavioral and cognitive sciences to our design methods. Design Thinking is a great way to start to think creatively about problems in the world, yet it alone does not equip people with the complex 3-dimensional thinking tools needed to address complex problems with creative interventions. In order to do this, you need systems thinking and advanced research tools, which is what we share in our approaches.

How can design help the world’s problems?

Design is the silent social scripter that influences nearly everything we do in our lives. It not only scripts our behaviors as humans, but it also molds and forms our understanding of the world through experiences. It's an incredibly powerful force that can be used to shift the status quo of the significant local and global issues we all know exist in the world.

WHO INITIATES YOUR PROJECTS?

We do! We believe in self-selection and love taking on big, complex problems. By using our Disruptive Design method, we dive in, exploring and mining deep into the causal relationships to find opportunities within the system to intervene. We use these experiences to create tools for us, and others, to use to shift the status quo. We push the boundaries of what design can do, so when we get inspired, frustrated or amazed by a phenomenon, from restrictive thinking to education, we self initiate, find funding partners, and develop our own propositions.

Can one person really make a difference?

Hells yes! The world is made up of systems that are the product of individual agents. Every agent influences the system. The most important thing is to identify your agency and start to develop your sphere of influence. No matter how small or big it is to start with, with intent you can grow and evolve your contributions to the world through an interactive approach to learning, exploring, and creating. The biggest change can come from the smallest part of the system.

Do you do any pro bono work, like for non-profits?

We are so into sharing the love, so a big yes to this. Despite being a small and very busy team, we allocate part of our time to helping share our knowledge and collaborating on complex problems with NGOs and NFTs.

Where can I learn more about Leyla?

You can check our her website, watch her TEDtalk, read her Medium posts, or follow her on social to find out where in the world she is and what on Earth she is provoking now!

HOW CAN I BE PART OF THE COMMUNITY?

We started a gang for creative rebels! Read more about it here, join up, and start hanging out with a group of active change-makers from around the world.

Who do you work with?

We have worked with loads of organizations, especially ones with acronyms like TED, IDEO, AIGA, UN, and a bunch that have normal names, too. We tend to work with small to massive organizations all with the unifying desire to turn what they do into some better, more positive and sustainable. We work closely with executive and CEOs as well as Human Resource and Sustainability Managers. If you want to make change, we are here to help.

I want to work for you, how do I apply?

That great news! We are small and mighty and have team members and trained facilitators around the world. We don't usually accept unsolicited applications, and we share all our opportunities via our social and newsletter channels. If you are interested in training to become a facilitator, than start off with the full Disruptive Design Methodology course on our UnSchools site and reach out after that!